The most vicious creature known to man

Biology was always my favourite subject in school. Shame then that I never really pursued it further, but there were reasons and we shall not go into them right here right now. Regardless, I was always fascinated by biology — not so much plants and trees, but animal biology... the zoology stuff.

I believe it was in Class 7 (Seventh Grade, or Year 8 depending on where you’re from) that I was given an assignment to make a presentation about the most vicious creature in the animal kingdom, according to me. Now, half my brain figured the teacher had been watching some TV show all morning and it happened to be called America’s Most Vicious Animal Attacks or something like that and in her infinite wisdom or unabashed lethargy, had decided to turn it into an assignment.

Still it sounded like fun. While all around me, voices emanated about whether a tiger was more vicious than a lion or whether a bear would survive an octopus attack, my mind was trying to establish parameters to decide on viciousness. After all, even a harmless skunk can be quite a vicious little piece of shit, spraying that vile stink-juice like it does. So I asks the teacher. I asks, “Who decides what is vicious and what isn’t?”. She says, “You do”. I says, “Oh”.

There could be a bit more to this assignment that I previously imagined. So I did a bit of research and whittled the list down to 3 strong contendors — a shark, a vulture and a boa constrictor. After an hour or two of deliberation, the jury that sits inside my head decided to vote in favour of the vulture. Circling dying animals and starting the process of picking them clean to the bone, as they’re dying, is about as vicious as it gets. And besides, I figured that a ton of people would go with the shark, on account of its total bad-assery. As for the boa constrictor? Well at the end of the day, the boa constrictor is just a jerk.

Presentation day rolled around and you know how every class has those one or two (or sometimes more) kids who will basically put in the minimum mental effort required and come up with something like “Tiger has claws and sharp-sharp teeth, so he is most vicious. Thank you please.” Yes I’m a bloody elitist, but that doesn’t invalidate my point. So, a bunch of tigers, lions, panthers and even cheetahs (wussies by nature) went by. Then I did the vulture thing. Wasn’t too shabby. Some of the ones that stood out were jellyfish, polar bear and a good friend on mine’s bid to be ironic with a presentation on why the mosquito was the most vicious creature.

It’s only today, well maybe a couple of days ago that I realised that we were all wrong. Every single one of us was dead wrong. Even Will Ferrell was wrong and Gavin Lyall (author: The Most Dangerous Game) couldn’t be more wrong if he tried. Fuelled by observations made over a lifetime and triggered by an interesting comment made by a colleague of mine, I have now realised that the most vicious animal known to man has always been none other than the Goddamn pigeon, which is also known by its latin binomial nomenclature Shittius motherfuckeris. And you that the braconid wasp (Verae peculya) had it bad?

But seriously, these vile creatures aren’t called flying rats, for cuteness sake. Pigeons are unequivocally, the scum of the earth. You know the phrase “to shit on someone’s work”. Well, I bet the person who coined it made it after watching pigeons drop a slimey smelly one on the world the good Lord created. But, I hear some of you argue, so their personal hygiene sucks, but that doesn’t make them vicious.

These people have clearly never been crapped on by these aerial shitmachines. Their viciousness stems from the fact that they will hunt you down and drop their load on you. It doesn’t matter where you are, they actually find ways to position themselves above you. Your next argument, I’m certain will be “Why you pickin’ on pigeons, you pigeon-hater? As REM says, ‘everybody poops... sometimes’.” Sure, other birds crap from a height too. But if you’ve noticed carefully, it’s usually only by accident that you get crow crap on you (say you’re walking under a tree) or if an eagle or something happens to crap on you. No other bird goes out of its way to score a direct hit everytime it needs “to go potty”.

Take my office washroom for instance. Due to the ingenious design of said washroom, there’s no ceiling overhead and the nearest thing to a ceiling is the roof of the shed that houses this monstrosity of architecture. After being tired of getting crapped on by pigeons while on a visit to the restroom, someone decided to put an asbestos sheet over the top — albeit one that covers only half the men’s room. For around two or three days, the plan worked. But soon after, the pigeons actually relocated themselves so as to be able to “bombs away” away from the sheet and on people in the washroom. Those vicious bastards!

Back to what I was talking about earlier... My colleague once happened to comment, while shooting the breeze, that for pigeons, strategically launching their waste so as to hit high-value targets is probably a sport. And in their sport, they too have their Sachin Tendulkars, he said. Why just Sachin I wondered, surely they also have their Shane Warnes and Muttiah Muralitharans and obviously, their Harsha Bhogles, Richie Benauds and yes, sadly, Ranjit Fernandos (check dis) too. You didn’t honestly believe that the whole “Grrrrooooo Grrrooooo” sound they make was just bird calls, did you?

It’s obviously their commentators describing a particularly strategic relocation that a pigeon just indulged in. Or they’re debating the pros and cons of dropping a fluid missile on an old woman, as opposed to say, a little boy running around in a field — faster moving target equals more points, you see. Or they could even be discussing how long it’ll be before that hotshot Leroy the Pigeon’s prolific scoring rate sees him overtake the established veteran and senior statesman of the game Ernest the Pigeon. Commentator 1 goes “Ghhhrrroooooo Ghhrroo” to state that it’s too early to say something like that, to which Commentator 2 fires back “Ghhhhrrroooo.. Ghrrooo Ghhrooo” which means NEVER! It’s never too soon, given our short life expectancies.

And you honestly thought they were just making noises to pass the time? You gullible fool.